Soon after ProClarity??™s acquisition by Microsoft, PerformancePoint Server was
announced as the answer to the question for what would happen to the ProClarity
Products. PerformancePoint Server was presented as the blending of Business
Scorecard Manager and ProClarity into one product, with the addition of a planning
module.
In reality, the integration of the powerful analytics from the ProClarity platform
did not happen as quickly as expected. The analytic features in PerformancePoint
Server 2005 are good at what they do, but they are limited compared to a true
analytic application. The analysis features that made it into PerformancePoint Server
are wrapped up primarily in two reports: the Analytic Chart and the Analytic Grid.
There are other ways of getting additional analysis but they rely on the Office Web
Components, which require both an installation of components on the client machine
and a client license. The Analytic Chart and Analytic Grid are very good at what
they do, allowing users to drill down to explore additional data, as well as use filters
to change some of the data, but they are basically limited to this functionality. End
users cannot change the dimensions being examined in a report (for example, they
can??™t replace products with customers on the rows). The Analytic Chart and Analytic
Grid are mentioned in Chapter 5 and covered in more detail in Chapter 6. Figure 2-2
shows an example of the Analytic Chart and Analytic Grid reports.
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